Middle East latest: Israeli jets pummel southern Lebanon and Beirut's suburbs

Israeli jets struck southern Lebanon and Beirut's southern suburbs on Wednesday, killing at least 20 people including a city mayor, Lebanese officials said.

Hezbollah acting leader Sheikh Naim Kassem declared Tuesday that the Lebanese militant group will ramp up attacks on Israel in response to an Israeli airstrike Monday on an apartment building in northern Lebanon that killed at least 22 people. Israel said it struck a target belonging to Hezbollah, but the United Nations called Tuesday for an independent investigation.

Israel has escalated its campaign against Hezbollah in recent weeks, after a year of near-daily exchanges of cross-border fire.

It’s been more than a year since Hamas-led militants blew holes in Israel’s security fence and stormed in, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250. Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not distinguish combatants from civilians. The war has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced about 90% of its population of 2.3 million people.

In northern Gaza, Israel has been waging an air and ground campaign in Jabaliya for more than a week, leaving families trapped in their shelters.

United States President Joe Biden’s administration warned Israel that it must increase the amount of humanitarian aid it allows into Gaza within the next 30 days or risk losing access to American weapons funding.

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Here's the latest:

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati accused Israel of “intentionally targeting” a meeting of the municipal council of the southern city of Nabatiyeh on Wednesday convened to discuss the city’s service and relief situation.

The strike killed the mayor of the city along with four other people and destroyed a municipality building.

Lebanon’s Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi said in a separate statement that the building was targeted during a meeting held to coordinate relief work and aid distribution for people who have remained in southern Lebanon. He said a civil defense member was killed and others injured in the strike.

Mikati accused the international community of being “deliberately silent” about Israeli strikes that have killed civilians and attacks on U.N. peacekeepers.

“What solution can be hoped for in light of this reality?” he said in a statement.

Israel has said that its increasing bombardment of many areas of Lebanon in the past month and the ground invasion it launched two weeks ago are aimed at pushing the Hezbollah militant group back from the border and destroying its weapons caches.

BERLIN — The head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees has called for access of international media organizations to Gaza to report about the situation on the ground.

UNRWA's Philippe Lazzarini told a news conference in Berlin on Wednesday that “most of the information that we are receiving is either by (...) local journalists or by organizations operating in Gaza.”

Lazzarini said because there are so many different types of narratives on the conflict, “it is of utmost importance ... that we continue to ask for the presence and all the access of international journalists.”

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian urged Muslim countries to be united against Israel during a phone conversation with the ruler of Oman, the president's website reported Wednesday.

The report quoted Pezeshkian as saying, “If we, Islamic countries, are united with each other, the Zionist regime will not dare to commit crimes so easily," and the U.S. and Western countries also could not support it.

Pezeshkian praised Oman’s stance regarding “Israeli crimes” in Gaza and Lebanon and demanded more pressure on those who are supporting Israel, the report said.

There was no immediate report in Omani state media on the call between Pezeshkian and Oman’s Sultan Haitham bin Tariq. Oman long has served as an interlocutor between Iran and the West.

JERUSALEM — Israeli authorities say they have arrested a man who was involved in an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate an Israeli scientist.

In a statement released Wednesday, the Shin Bet internal security agency said Iran paid 35-year-old Vladimir Verhovski $100,000 to kill an Israeli scientist. It did not provide evidence or name the target of the alleged plot.

Iran has accused Israel of being behind the targeted killing of scientists involved in its nuclear program.

The Shin Bet said Verhovski had acquired a gun, cartridge and bullets, and agreed to flee to Russia afterwards. It said he had also gathered information at the direction of Iran.

It’s one of several alleged plots the Shin Bet says it has foiled in recent months that involved Israelis accused of having been recruited by Iran.

Israel and Iran have waged a shadow war for years that burst to the surface after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack triggered the war in Gaza. Israel and Iran exchanged fire directly for the first time in April, and Israel has vowed to retaliate after an Iranian ballistic missile attack earlier this month.

Iran supports armed groups across the region, including Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s Health Ministry says Israeli airstrikes on the southern Lebanese city of Nabatiyeh have killed at least 5 people.

The ministry and the state-run National News Agency said the provincial capital’s municipality building was hit by one of the strikes Wednesday. Huwaida Turk, the governor of Nabatiyeh province, told The Associated Press that Mayor Ahmad Kahil was killed in Wednesday’s strikes on the provincial capital. Local media reported that the mayor of Nabatiyeh and local government staff were in the building. Rescue workers are searching for bodies under the rubble.

The NNA says there were at least seven airstrikes in Nabatiyeh and some nearby villages.

Earlier in the week, Israeli strikes over Nabatiyeh destroyed its historic century-old market district.

The Israeli military said it struck dozens of targets in and around Nabatiyeh linked to the Hezbollah militant group, including command centers and weapons storage facilities that it said were embedded in civilian areas.

BEIRUT — Israeli strikes have killed at least 15 people in the southern Lebanese town of Qana, which has long been associated with civilian deaths after Israeli strikes during previous conflicts with Hezbollah.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the strikes in Qana late Tuesday. Lebanon’s Civil Defense said 15 bodies had been recovered from the rubble of a building and that rescue efforts were still underway.

In 1996, Israeli artillery shelling on a United Nations compound housing hundreds of displaced people in Qana killed at least 100 civilians and wounded scores more, including four U.N. peacekeepers. During the 2006 war, an Israeli strike on a residential building killed nearly three dozen people, a third of them children. Israel said at the time that it struck a Hezbollah rocket launcher behind the building.

PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron stressed “the absolute necessity of a cease-fire without further delay in Lebanon” and called for Israel to stop operations there in a phone call Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Macron urged Israel “to put an end to this unjustifiable targeting," according to a statement from his office, which also said France would continue to work with troop contributors and alongside the United Nations Secretary-General to ensure the full implementation of the mission of the peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL.

Netanyahu said in a statement after the call that he was opposed to a unilateral cease-fire. He said he would not agree to any arrangement that does not provide security for residents of northern Israel and “does not stop Hezbollah from rearming and regrouping.”

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran is ready for a retaliatory attack from Israel, the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.

In a phone call Tuesday with United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said his country is fully prepared to answer to any kind of “adventure-seeking.”

“Responsibility of consequences of spreading insecurity in the region will be on the regime and the United States as main supporter,” of Israel, he added.

He urged the U.N. to use its entire capacity for stopping “crimes and invasions,” as well as providing humanitarian aid to Lebanon and Gaza.

Iran launched some 180 missiles at Israel on Oct. 1 in retaliation for the deaths of Hamas Leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Israel has threatened to strike back for the barrage.

Iran is the main backer of Lebanese Hezbollah and supports anti-Israeli groups in the region such as Palestinian Hamas.

BEIRUT — Israeli jets struck the southern suburbs of Beirut early Wednesday for the first time in six days, Lebanese state media reported. The casualty count was not yet clear.

The attack comes just one day after caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said the United States government gave him some assurances of Israel easing its strikes in the Lebanese capital.

Israel says it is striking Hezbollah assets in the suburbs, where the militant group has a strong presence, but is also a busy residential and commercial area. The Israeli military said the Wednesday strike hit a weapons warehouse stored under a residential building.

The Israeli military posted an evacuation warning on X, formerly Twitter, saying it is targeting a building in the Haret Hreik neighborhood. An Associated Press photographer saw three airstrikes in the area, the first coming less than an hour after the notice.

Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel on Oct. 8 in solidarity with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, following their surprise attack on southern Israel. Almost one year of low-level fighting has turned into all-out war and displaced some 1.2 million people in Lebanon.

Elsewhere, Israeli strikes late Tuesday in the southern town of Qana killed at least 15 people, according to Lebanese Civil Defense.

MANILA, Philippines — A European Union official expressed regret over the failure so far of efforts to forge a cease-fire in the Middle East, saying that fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah has made it more difficult to work for wide-ranging reforms in Lebanon and create conditions to draw international financial aid in.

EU Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič told The Associated Press in an interview late Tuesday in Manila that stalled reforms in Lebanon include the election of a new president, the establishment of a working government and the signing of a deal with the International Monetary Fund.

“It’s difficult to see that happening in these circumstances when Lebanon is under such a strain,” said Lenarčič, who flew to Manila to attend an Asia Pacific conference on disaster mitigation.

“That’s one of the reasons why we’re calling for a cease-fire, so as to allow Lebanon to organize itself so that it can benefit from all the funding which is out there,” he said. “I regret that we have not been heard.”

The EU was also extremely concerned over the killings of civilians in the fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group. “This collateral damage is simply unacceptable,” Lenarčič said.